Alexander Barrera > Recent Status Updates

Reading this to the Interstellar soundtrack is quite novel. I didn’t expect Padilla to have an “end goal” to reach with this book— of proving the ”holograph reality”. Although… I can’t tell if he’s just pontificating and aggrandizing the concept of numbers and their connections with physics.

Still. I’m intrigued. I’m happy to receive some knowledge on how universal expansion may be caused by…

I’m actually enjoying this more now. I think I’m beginning to not just digest Murray’s writing, but also provide ny own thoughts and challenges to them. I wrote a note that ponders over a seeming implication he made that I was proud of for catching. I look forward to thinking about what he’s proposing.

I will say that “potentialities” is the worst, most pretentious word I’ve ever read.

Fuuuuck this book is so hard to read… I don’t understand why academics have to use such obtuse language and metaphor to get their points across. And the sheer quantity of that shit, reiterating the same types of points is sooo fucking annoying. It also makes this mfer’s argument about removing mysticism seen hypocritical, when the use of such extensive artful language seems like a deification dog whistle.

I think I realized yesterday, more so today, that the three storylines are probably not going to intersect. Personally, I don’t need all the characters to meet, but I would like their to be consequences from each storyline bleed into another. Right now, DIANIMA seems to be the thread tying them all together.

Also, the chapter about Dr. Chan was fucking amazing. Read it listening to “Rite of Passage”.

This mfer is really just Viktor from League of Legends. His predominant axiom is to facilitate the proliferation of “glorious evolution”.

His prime goal of instituting “libertarian municipality” is intriguing; a form of society with individual ‘strongholds’ of governance motivated by putting ecology first to contend with the centralized moral state is interesting. If I understood that correctly.

I love how the allusions of details from the quotes keep buildings and expectations for what will be discovered by our researchers.

And this last chapter had such beautiful prose describing the octopus performance.

Jesus, this is the hardest book I’ve ever read. Insanely long chapters and passages, dense writing with so many words I’ve never heard, and very liberal use of various punctuation that make sentences hard to follow.

I will say, it has become satisfying to understand the author’s intentions as I read along.

Right now, he’s really obsessed with roasting spiritual environmentalism as a concept.

God fucking dammit I’m not re-writing what I just wrote.

I like a lot of stuff rn, that’s all I’m gonna say.

This book has me kinda hooked right now. I love all the allusions to the importance of language. I love the quotes before each chapter from Ha’s and others’ books. I’m a sucker for this kind of philosophical framing in media.

I love the exploration of science leading to understandable conclusions about the octopi. I like going the perspective of seemingly unrelated characters.

Okay, I realized that this book is basically a cyberpunk book. And that has me so much more interested. I love getting pieces of lore about how our real world has undergone a different history that has shaped the political landscape of the world, forming different kinds of nations. But it’s also not the focus of the story. At least not yet. It’s background lore. The best kind of lore.

I hate that the beginning of this book (the first 2 chapters) is mainly just reading through needlessly long, purple-prose descriptions of locations. That shit is exhausting to read.